and the temple of God was opened, and there was seen the ark of his testament: and there were lightnings, and voices, and thunderings, and an earthquake, and great hail.
Revelations 11:19, (King James Version)
“Suppose they actually have answers to the most perplexing questions we can think of, what would you ask them?”
Old Jake pondered my question. He was sitting at the helm of the ancient sailing yacht we were delivering from the Virgin Islands to Palm Beach, and looked out over the sea as if the answer lay out there with the dolphins. By the most remarkable circumstances of Old Jake’s abilities of mental telepathy and distance viewing, we were able to communicate with them, and we were
constantly astounded at their wisdom. It wasn’t the kind of knowledge we recognized in our daily lives; it was a deeper more spiritual knowing. It was an understanding of those things, which only in moments of enlightenment have touched us, their primitive land cousins.
Even as we talked, I typed our conversation on my laptop computer, which now held the notes of several days, and impressions from our encounters.
“That’s an interesting question,” he ventured.
Old Jake could really drive me nuts. When he didn’t have an answer, he always replied with a comment about the question. I knew his routine, and he would shortly make the question more difficult.
“Suppose they have figured everything out, but are only prepared to answer one more question, what would it then be? What would we humans most like to know?” He said.
There, I knew he would make it more difficult, but I knew what I wanted answered. One question? No, there were two, and they go hand in hand. Old Jake would of course know that, so who was leading whom on?
“It’s not my question,” I said. “It has been asked by every philosopher, and most scientists. Every one has tried to answer it. I read in a book by Stephen Hawking, I think it was called A Brief History of Time, that when we know how the universe came into being, the greater question will be why. Do you think the dolphins will answer why there is a universe? Going the next step is thee a reason why are we here?”
Old Jake thought for a moment, and then it was as if the question left him.
“Captain, there’s something very strange you should know about the dolphins.” He spoke in quiet subdued voice, yet there was a tinge of sudden realization in it, but even while talking about every possible subject, from the mechanics of sailing, to the reason for there being a universe, the familiar sounds of the boat registered with me. She lay becalmed in the waters of the famed Bermuda Triangle, sixty miles west of the Turks and Caicos Islands. Old Jake’s measured voice brought me back to full alertness. I sat up and looked out over the sea.
“I don’t see any,” I said.
“That’s what’s so strange,” said Old Jake. “They’ve been with us all day, and now suddenly, the moment you asked these ultimate questions of mankind, they’re gone. I can’t sense their presence anywhere.”
We both looked in all directions. The dolphins had become our friends, and our mentors, and now in their silent way they had disappeared back into the boundless sea.
“Without a sound,” I said, knowing that Old Jake would have followed my thought to the same place.
We listened. There was a sound, but it was not the sound of dolphins. It was like a whisper in the air, a faint husssssssh, or maybe it was more of a huuuuuuh, like someone exhaling after climbing a flight of stairs. First noticeable only in our subconscious, now that we were listening for the dolphins our senses awakened and it became an awareness, then awareness became a concern.
“Do you hear it?” I said.
“I feel it,” answered Old Jake. “I feel it as others might dimly sense the supernatural. I feel a disturbance in the balance of the sea.”
The sea lay flat, like an oily slick of silvery foil, without a ripple to show that there was any depth to the ocean whatsoever. Wind and sea, both were dead calm and without signs of life. In the heat of the windless day the sails hung slack in their hopeless search for any breath or gust of air that might fill them and give them life. They wanted life so they could do their work, but only the rays of the relentless tropical late-afternoon sun filled them as they hung listless from the masts and rigging. Ghostly white sails casting translucent shadows on the flat listless sea.
We were without an engine and at the mercy of the unknown, helpless to alter or effect our course, which was now only determined by the power of the sea with her unknown and mysterious currents. Seafarers of old would have no knowledge of the currents, for their observations were governed by the inaccuracy of simple instruments, and mathematical formulas. We could trace our drift on an hour-to-hour, even minute-to-minute basis, with the aid of our Global Positioning System, which relied not on the abilities of our observations, but on the accuracy of the satellite network maintained to give the precise location anywhere on earth. I checked the GPS again. We had drifted two miles in an hour. Had we been in the Gulf Stream this could be expected, but we were sixty miles northwest of the Turks and Caicos Islands at the very bottom of the Bahamas chain, and six hundred miles from any known ocean current flowing at this velocity.
“This is very strange,” said Old Jake. “In biblical times, it was forbidden to enter the holiest of holy. Only the High Priest could enter once a year and speak to the Ark of the Covenant. By asking the forbidden questions, I fear we have just entered the forbidden place. We have asked the dolphins for the meaning of life, and why the universe exists. We have gone to far, and touched the Oracle of God.”
My mind made an instant connection, and I knew what he was talking about. I could not respond. Pieces of old knowledge flooded through me. Old Jake equated the dolphins with the Ark of the Covenant because they spoke the mind of God. From deep within me the wisdom of the ages came forth. In our quest to learn, we had eaten of the Tree of Life, in so doing we were falling from Grace. Now there would be thunder, earthquake and voices.
We listened to the sound, and looked in its direction, but we saw nothing. There was nothing but the sameness of the sea. Beneath the surface we knew there was abundant and remarkable life. We had touched and communicated with dolphins, and learned their secrets, but above the surface there was only Old Jake and me and an ancient sailing yacht named Hamburgers.
“See the mist hanging over the sea on the starboard horizon?” Old Jake pointed to a slight mist that rose out of the sea and hung like a veil over the water.
The sound seemed to be coming from there, and although I had never encountered anything like it, I knew.
“Old Jake,” I said, “this is not going to be good news.”
“It broods ill indeed, Captain. The poem goes:
Still hid in mist, and on the left
went down into the sea.”
Old Jake was not going to get the better of me. I took a wild stab. “The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner,” I said.
Shipwrecks in the Bermuda Triangle seldom, if ever, leave survivors, but there are legends told among native Bahamian fishermen of whirlpools and the supernatural.
I thought of the story I had told as we painted Hamburgers original name back on her bow. The old Vikings encountered maelstroms off the Norway coast and took them to be caused by a giant dragon. As the dragon stirred great whirlpools formed and swallowed ships whole, leaving no trace. Was this the secret of the Bermuda Triangle? Why did I think of this now? I had an uneasy premonition of what lay ahead. Could it be that colliding currents creating whirlpools of legendary proportions in the Bermuda Triangle caused the sound and the mist? In the windless day and without an engine, Hamburgers had no choice but to drift towards her destiny. A mighty unseen current was pulling us. We drifted towards the mist. The noise strengthened. The mists came closer and closer. Soon we would be shrouded in the mystery, face to face with a new and undocumented reality.
Fear is not in my usual repertoire of emotions. I have faced hurricanes in boats far less seaworthy than this. Mountainous seas have crashed down with the force of roaring freight trains. At such times, fear might have raised its ugly head, but not the overwhelming and sudden fear that now swept over me. It was the greatest fear of all, the fear of the unknown. Yet, I wondered, was fear not the fount of the mysteries that fueled the quest of adventurers? We may be fearful of sailing off the edge of the world, but still adventurers keep taking small steps for mankind. Like them, we would now learn the unknown. Here we were on our own little floating chip of wood in the Bermuda Triangle, and the hiss became louder and louder, and with it the uncertainty grew.
A strange line in the ocean snaked towards us, and along the line small whirlpools formed, dissipated and reformed. Some were quite small, no more than six inches across, while others were larger with considerable swirling action and perhaps five or even six feet across. The line reached us and Hamburgers caught the edge, as she turned with the current. It passed us by as we drifted further toward the mists and the sound. Nature was preparing us for the terror ahead in the same fashion she uses by first showing us the darkening clouds and letting us hear the rumbling of thunder before the storm hits. The snaking line approached us again, and we saw that it was the boundary between two currents going in opposite directions, their forces creating the vortices that increased as we approached the mists.
A large whirlpool some ten feet across formed along the line. Hamburgers drifted into it, and spun around, and around, as if she were riding on an old phonograph record. Then the stern swung out of the vortex and the current pulled us free as the whirlpool continued on its path along the mysterious line of demarcation. The current still carried us closer to the mists and the noise that now sounded more like a waterfall.
I felt an apprehension, yet my mind refused to contemplate the ultimate disaster. It was just unthinkable that a boat should perish on a perfectly calm day, but deep within me that apprehension grew. Old Jake was strangely calm in the presence of the mystery. I sensed he was resigned to experience a dramatic conclusion to the adventure. He knew so much about the sea and nature. He didn’t say anything. He kept his fears about the strange whirlpools, and currents to himself. He only stared at the phenomena with fascination and anticipation.
“What are we faced with?” I said, knowing that there would not be a simple answer.
“Best guess is that we’re near a place where a deep ocean current is making its way to the surface,” he said. “It could be caused by a distant submerged earthquake.”
“Why would it do that just as we were having a nice day?” I said.
“You know the answer,” he said, “you recalled the verse from the eleventh chapter of Revelations, with the earthquake, voices and hail. But whether we touched the sacred oracle or not, the ocean isn’t static. It’s rather a bit like the atmosphere. There are currents and layers and counter-currents. Perhaps it is in deed an earthquake is the Mid Atlantic Ridge that’s causing an updraft at a time when the surface current is running against the intrusion. I don’t know. We might not have given it much attention if it was windy. The waves might have obliterated the eddies. I have heard of this. There are so many legends it’s become part of the island mythology, and now I see it’s true.”
I found the scientific mind remarkable. We were in peril, and he found the process more fascinating than the possible outcome. To discover or to document something new outweighed the risk of loss of both boat and life. In the few days we had been together, I had come to realize that Old Jake was a fatalist, a believer in predestination. Considering the remarkable paths our lives had taken to bring us to this place, much could be attributed to the fickleness of fate. My personal belief is that one should not tempt fate, yet fate had conspired that we should record the thoughts of the dolphins, and now it took its vengeance for asking for answers to the secrets of the universe.
The whirlpools were becoming larger and more violent. We skirted by several, and although we didn’t get caught in their swirl, the currents swung Hamburgers till we were stern to the current. It kept leading us closer toward the mist, and I could only guess at the maelstrom hidden in its center. I went through a feeling of total disbelief. This was not happening. At any moment I would wake up, and the sea would be calm again, and our dolphin friends would surround us. That feeling passed, and I felt a moment of panic. I was helpless against these strange forces of nature. There was nothing I could do. I looked at Old Jake again. What was he thinking? How could he escape showing any signs of fear? In fact, he was ridiculously peaceful. I sensed he knew his life journey was coming to an end, and he preferred to deal with the end in silent reflection.
“Life goes on,” he said as if reading my thoughts, which I realized he was. “It goes on container after container. Only the containers are dispensable, but life itself is eternal.”
A great whirlpool moved toward us and caught us broadside. We broached and slid into the whirling mass of white sea. The noise was deafening. We were blinded by the spindrift, and deafened by the roar, but above it all we heard a crack and felt Hamburgers shake violently. Through the spray I caught sight of the main boom. It had been torn from the gooseneck attaching it to the mast. Then the noise abated, the whirling hole collapsed and we bobbed to the surface.
“Not too bad,” I called out to Old Jake. “If we can take that, we can take anything.”
I instinctively surveyed the damage. The boom hung over the side, the mainsail had ripped from top to bottom. Even if we had wind it would be difficult to sail out of this danger without the main. I made my way towards the wreckage and started cutting off the sail with my rigging knife. Then I noticed that one of the deck hatches had also been torn off, and we had taken on considerable amounts of water. I heard the automatic bilge pumps working, but I knew that no amount of pumping would ever pump out the ocean. Old Jake came and grasping a piece of the mainsail, he began to cover the gaping deck hatch.
“The captain is always right, even if he is wrong.” I could barely hear him above the noise of the whirlpools, but I nodded. We understood each other. “We didn’t take it too well,” he said.
He continued trying to cover the opening. In the turbulence of the sea it was an effort to move, but I made my way to the damaged hatch to help him cover it.
“I don’t know why we’re doing this,” he called directly into my ear. “If we hear correctly what’s going on in the mist it will make the last whirlpool look like a sparring match before the main event.”
“If the current we’re in is going towards the mist,” I called back, “then there must also be a current leading away from it. If we are lucky we may just catch it and go free.” I said it, but I didn’t believe it. Neither did Old Jake.
“Don’t get your hopes up, Captain. I feel it in my bones, this vessel is predestined to her doom.”
He pronounced it with such certainty that we both knew the hopelessness of our predicament. I felt panic again. I’m not supposed to let this happen. I’m in charge. It’s my responsibility. Anyone other than Old Jake would be screaming curses at me, but not him. How could he be so calm? But he was right. There was no current leading us away. Doomed, predestined, we entered the mist. It was cold and dense. It enshrouded us and cut out the glare of the sun. The current was quite different here. We made a giant circle, perhaps a thousand feet in circumference, and we spun around in the circling current again and again. With each revolution the circle got smaller and smaller until it became clear that it wasn’t a circle at all. It was a spiral, and from its center the roar went out like the sound of Niagara Falls.
“This is going to be the experience of a lifetime,” I called to Old Jake. “Will you be all right?” Dumb stupid question, I thought. Of course he would be all right. Dead, but all right. In the big picture, we would all be dead sooner or later.
“Don’t worry about me,” he called back. “My life’s work is done, but you must save it. You must save the notes in your computer.”
I had instinctively stored the computer in the lazaret under the cockpit helm seat. It was still intact and dry. I pressed the power button and it came to life. I reached for a disk marked Dolphin in the carrying case and placed it in the A drive, then brought up the file menu and clicked on save as. I typed A:Dolphin. The computer whirred as the information transferred to the disk. When it stopped I placed the disk in a plastic sandwich bag and taped it to my leg with duct tape. If the Dolphin Disk was to be saved, I might as well be saved with it, but I sincerely doubted that this would be the outcome of the day’s adventure.
Through the mist I saw a great wall of water roaring towards us. It caught us broadside. I took a big breath of air and snapped my safety harness to the lifeline. Hamburgers caught the wave and slid down the wall of water. She was completely knocked over. Her masts were in the water. Spray was everywhere, but then the wave passed and Hamburgers righted herself. A terrible sight appeared. The masts were broken off, all deck fittings washed away, and the cabin hatches were gone.
“Old Jake!” I called out. “Where are you?” There was no answer. I couldn’t see him anywhere. Old Jake was lost. I felt a terrible void. Even though I would soon be dead myself, I missed him. I wished we could have gone together. I wished I could have said good bye.
The boat had taken on vast quantities of water, and with the loss of buoyancy she was wallowing like a drowned rat in the swirling currents. I didn’t hear the bilge pumps and knew that the electrical system had been flooded. Now she approached the edge of the world, the center of the mist and current, the mother of all whirlpools. The wall of water went straight down, but the water swirled around with great speed. It was a hole in the bottom of the sea, a watery tornado funnel to Davy Jones’ locker.
Hamburgers reached the edge. Like a piece of driftwood, she was carried around the crest for a complete revolution, and then she went bow first into the foam. She pitchpoled into the mass of swirling water. It was a hurricane of noise. Over the noise of the water I could hear things breaking, but I couldn’t see through the foam. I took a big breath as the water roared over me. The boat was completely submerged in foam and sea. She was being spun around; my mind envisioned her as a rag in the spin cycle of a washing machine. My lungs were bursting for air, and then like a giant whale she broached briefly through the surface as the whirlpool dispersed its energy. I breathed, and then I managed a quick glance.
I was awestruck by what I saw. Violently turbulent water was everywhere. Crashing and tearing forces ripped at the ancient timbers of the boat. Then, with a shudder of painful agony, which I felt to my very soul, she gave up. The solid oak timbers crushed and folded then strutted out in awkward angles as she tore apart. In the roar of the torrents of water, the crushing sound was overwhelmed, and went unheard. It was time for her to go the way of all boats. She slid back into the whirlpool. Davy Jones was waiting.
Through the spray I saw the bow rip by. I knew the boat had torn in two. We went down, down. Looking up it was like the edge of the mighty Niagara swirling sideways. The seat I was clinging to disappeared. I was being pulled somewhere by my safety harness. I took my rigging knife and cut it. Everything disappeared. I was alone in a hole to hell.
Suddenly the swirling stopped. I don’t know what happened, but I must have reached the bottom of the maelstrom. There was air. It might have been a bubble, and I gasped for the life-giving atmosphere and managed a giant breath. Then I felt the mountain of water crash into the bubble. I was under it all with everything else that had ever been lost at sea. Movement was useless. I didn’t know which way was up. My oxygen was running out. I had to breathe. I knew that as I lost consciousness my involuntary muscles would cause me to breathe my last breath not of air, but of water, and then eternity would await me. I had to save the Dolphin Disk. I had to breathe. I had to live. My final prayer was: Help me! Help me! I must save the Dolphin Disk. For an instant I wondered if I would be hearing the voices, then I felt like a child, a child who long ago had drowned.